Conquering HIV/AIDS without antiretrovirals

There are innumerable anecdotes and personal testimonies and a few mentions in published scientific articles of people who overcame HIV-positive diagnoses, or AIDS diagnoses, without antiretroviral drugs. Roberto Giraldo is seeking testimonies from such indviduals for a book he is working on.

“If you are a person diagnosed as seropositive (HIV-positive) and live a normal life without taking antiretrovirals, you can help me with a book that I am writing, a book that will feature the testimonies of those who have survived this diagnosis. This book will be in support of and will be of great help to those who suffer the social Calvary of seropositivity and AIDS. History will recognize the courage and bravery of each witness and your testimony will support and bring hope to those affected, demonstrating that it is possible to escape the incorrect forecasts of the official view on AIDS.”

22 Responses to “Conquering HIV/AIDS without antiretrovirals”

James Foyesaid

I wonder why Mr. Johnson doesn’t speak out more openly regarding his own experience being diagnosed as HIV-positive. I saw a news story on him recently and he looked as fit and healthy as ever. He must weigh about 250 pounds, and it’s all muscle. The subject of his health came up briefly, the reporter saying (as Magic worked out with weights in the background) “he controls it with exercise and medication”. Something tells me medication does not mean “anti-retroviral drugs”. Maybe it just means “vitamins”. Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe Magic is just too respectful to say something that might embarrass the medical establishment. Inquiring minds want to know.

Salemsaid

I applaud the book. I’m just a little “iffy” about how it will be perceived, being that it will consist of testimonials of people who have been deemed sero-positive and ways that they have managed to stay healthy without the use of antiretrovirals, when in all actuality, these people are perfectly normal/healthy and shouldn’t have to be deemed as anything but that. It just, in some ways, sort of creates or supports the whole concept that HIV is something that truly exists, yet you can live healthy with it and without antiretrovirals.

Magic Johnson has been the spokesperson for two “anti-retroviral” drugs – I think Combovir and Crixivan, but I’m too lazy to look it up. At any rate he knows which side his bread is thickly buttered on.

I do recall, though, a story about his wife nagging him to take his meds. I suspect he takes a lot of drug holidays and probably flushes the damn things down the toilet more often than not.

Joesaid

Folks, I too will be really interested to read this book. However, let me say that one of my friends was diagnosed with ‘AIDS’ three or four years ago. He delayed taking ARVs as long as possible because he thought they would kill him. He regarded ARVs as lethally toxic, but as his health had been spiralling downwards for two or three years by then, and he was so weak he could barely walk, he took them thinking death was coming soon anyway. They didn’t kill him, and within three days of taking them he was starting to feel better. Of course that doesn’t make sense in terms of how ARVs are supposedly working. Nevertheless, he’s continued taking them for two or three years now, and he’s back living a normal life (he parties less often, but still does 5+ hours of exercise a week, which is not bad for a man in his late middle-age). I have another friend (who was never a HIV skeptic) who has been on ARVs for more than 6 years.

I’m very interested in the debate over what ‘AIDS’ is and what relationship (if any) HIV plays in it. But from what I’ve seen, certainly in some circumstances, some kinds of ARVs actually help some people. It doesn’t do the credibility of HIV skeptics any good to claim that this cannot be. Whether or not my friends will be made ill by long-term use of ARVs is another issue, and time will tell.

My skeptical friend researched all the possible combinations of ARVs to find those which had the least recorded side-effects (which coincidentally the non-skeptic friend had already been taking for some years). Having been a HIV skeptic for 20 years, I was shocked and puzzled to see my friend doing well on ARVs.

I don’t think that ARVs improving the health of someone diagnosed with AIDS proves anything about a causative role for HIV. Since even a single ARV is supposed to disrupt the biochemical pathway of HIV manufacture in the body, then one ARV ought to have worked in the 1980s. The fact that different combinations of ARVs are successful in some people and failures with others really means that not much can be drawn in the ways of scientific proof from any of this. Using a pharmaceutical blunderbuss to fight a multi-factorial disease doesn’t give us any clear scientific insight. There are too many variables.

That’s why I’m still interested in hearing from people with AIDS diagnoses who have not been part of this unscientific experiment.

Henry Bauersaid

Many thanks indeed for your thoughtful comment. The most pressing and important aspect of HIV/AIDS is the question of what people should do if they are diagnosed “HIV+” or “AIDS”.

One salient difficulty is that being diagnosed “AIDS” is not specific enough to know what is going on. Was there any manifest illness, and if so, what? About 2/3 of “AIDS” diagnoses since the mid-1990s have been on the criterion of CD4 <200 and HIV+, in absence of clinical symptoms .

As to benefit from ARVs, medical history includes a number of toxic substances being used as cures, effective in restricted doses for restricted lengths of time. There is also the phenomenon of hormesis — slight exposure to something harmful stimulates the immune system to be “super-effective”. Dr. Juliane Sacher, who has treated AIDS patients successfully for many years by alternative treatments, also uses ARVs occasionally when she suspects that some occult inflammatory process is not responding to the alternative treatment, see AIDS AS INTESTINAL DYSBIOSIS, 23 February 2008https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/aids-as-intestinal-dysbiosis/ and ALTERNATIVE TREATMENTS FOR AIDS, 25 February 2008https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/alternative-treatments-for-aids/.

The conclusive evidence that “HIV” does not cause “AIDS” leaves begging the significant questions, the most important ones for the people concerned, what exactly an “HIV+” test and an “AIDS” diagnosis might mean and what to do about it. I’m perpetually frustrated because people ask me, and I don’t have satisfactory answers. The brother of a friend was diagnosed, went on ARVs, and is doing well; he read my book and now keeps his doses to a bare minimum, without his doctor’s approval. That’s not a satisfactory situation, people in his condition need a doctor who takes a truly empirical approach—but any doctor who doesn’t use “standard” approaches takes great career risks.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the necessary research will be done until HIV = AIDS is no longer the mainstream belief, and doctors and researchers start to inquire specifically into each indvidual’s condition who presents with “HIV+” or an “AIDS-defining” illness. It’s an added tragedy that a person who presents with either of those is often diagnosed “AIDS” according to other criteria: if you’re gay or black or hemophiliac and present with one of those conditions, you’re likely to be told you have AIDS; if you present with exactly the same symptoms but are an Asian or white female heterosexual, you are unlikely to be told that. How many uncertainties there are in this is described in Weiss and Cowan, chapter 8 (Laboratory detection of human retroviral infection) in Wormser, AIDS and Other Manifestations of HIV Infection (4th ed. 2004).

Joesaid

Hi Henry, thanks for your considered response. When I’ve raised this situation in other skeptical environments, I’ve been met with quite a bit of hostility. I completely agree that the situation is awful. I had friends who went on AZT in the early 1990s whose health declined rapidly, and when they realised what it was doing to them and took themselves off it, they made a good recovery. Some continued to take AZT, and were dead by the mid ’90s. It’s disgusting that the orthodoxy doesn’t come clean and admit that AZT was a diasaster.

I did download the Sacher PDF from your site a few months ago. It makes interesting reading. Through trial-and-error (and definitely not through following the scientific method), doctors have come up with these chemicals that sometimes work and sometimes don’t, and they have no genuine explanation for this variation. To me it makes sense if one considers that AIDS is multi-factorial.

After facing the opprobrium of my friend’s family and colleagues for the year before he began taking ARVs, I don’t try to persuade him to stop taking them. But at the first sign of negative side-effects, I will not be able to keep quiet.

Henry Bauersaid

Re treatment, good nutrition with particular emphasis on probiotics is worth recommending, because it can hardly do any harm, and personal testimonies are that at least some HIV+ people have remained healthy while paying attention to that and to a generally healthy lifestyle. It was empasized recently, in a radio interview, by John Lauritsen, whom I trust implicitly.

Re AZT, I was interested that Walensky et al. claimed no benefit for it in their article, “The Survival Benefits of AIDS Treatment in the United States” (Journal of Infectious Diseases 194 [2006] 11-19), while claiming 3 million saved lives from prophylaxis and from ART after the mid-’90s; though they credited ZDV = AZT with preventing mother-to-child transmission from 1994 on. I took that as a “back door” acknowledgment at least that AZT was no good, though not going so far as to admit its deadly effects. I think the increased death rates from 1987 to mid-1990s show rather clearly that AZT was killing people, see Table D in “HIV DISEASE” IS NOT AN ILLNESS, 19 March 2008https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/“hiv-disease”-is-not-an-illness/ and slide 6 in http://failingsofhivaidstheory.homestead.com/SSE2008.ppt. Data from the annual “Health, United States” reports http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hus/previous.htm#editions, which I’m just looking at, show deaths rising rapidly from 1987 on and then dropping back sharply after 1996 to about the 1987 annual number; if just those “excess” deaths were owing to AZT, that would be about 150,000 people.

Macdonaldsaid

In your first Comment paragraph four, you begin with a categorical statement:

“I don’t think that ARVs improving the health of someone diagnosed with AIDS proves anything about a causative role for HIV.”

This is correct as it stands. The circumstances you speculate about in the following would not change the truth-value of your first statement regardless:

“Since even a single ARV is supposed to disrupt the biochemical pathway of HIV manufacture in the body, then one ARV ought to have worked in the 1980s. The fact that different combinations of ARVs are successful in some people and failures with others really means that not much can be drawn in the ways of scientific proof from any of this. Using a pharmaceutical blunderbuss to fight a multi-factorial disease doesn’t give us any clear scientific insight. There are too many variables.”

It’s a favourite argument with the AIDS-establishment to say that, “since the drugs work, we must be right about causation”. But this is a crude fallacy. Even if AZT monotherapy had worked as well as the newest custom-made drug combos are said to do, and worked equally well for everybody, it would still not have established HIV as the cause of anything beside fabulous wealth for the pharmaceuticals.

Here is the actual equation (our mathematicians would be able to put the bracketed part in the right place):

HIV = AIDS = Death (in the absence of ARVs)

I’ll spare you the theory part, suffice to say no amount of cases where the drugs seem to work could prove HIV/AIDS theory, although they conform to the equation.

By the same token, HIV/AIDS theory could never be disproven by the drugs not working. Fortunately for AIDS Inc., one might say, no number of instances of “treatment failure” or iatrogenocide would suffice to prove that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

This is because the HIV/AIDS theory is not a statement about what happens when ARVs are involved. It does make a statement, however, about what happens when ARVs are not involved:

HIV = AIDS = Death.

ARVs may or may not change this outcome, but nothing else will change it. That’s what the theory states.

Even a single case which does not conform to this equation, even a single case where HIV doesn’t lead to AIDS and Death, would in principle constitute a disproof of the theory.

The first part of the equation, HIV = AIDS, has been thoroughly discredited, and as a consequence various ad hoc additions have been made to the original theory: External cofactors, human genetic mutants, weak virus strains etc.

The second part, AIDS = Death, is a little more difficult, but there are still plenty of cases of people pulling through an AIDS event and regaining their health without the ARVs.

It is very difficult for an HIV-doctor to explain away such cases. I have read of some who suggest that
“HIV” has spontaneously mutated into a form that is manageable by the patient’s immune system. That explanation, IMO, undermines much of HIV theory, but that’s another discussion.

There is thus no reason for you as an HIV/AIDS sceptic to be “shocked”, as you put it, by seeing somebody doing well on the ARVs. But you are absolutely right to warn us that if our HIV/AIDS scepticism is linked too closely to the notion that all the drugs are nothing but rat poison, we commit the same categorical mistake as the AIDS establishment. In our case the equation would look like this:

ARVs = Illness/AIDS = Death.

We have unfortunately inherited the notion that since AIDS and Death must have an identifiable cause, ARVs are in all cases such a cause. Rethinker logic has to an extent been infected by the HIV/AIDS monocausal logic.

This happens often when one is reacting to something which expresses a prevalent world view. It is extremely difficult to completely abstract from the context within which one exists and project oneself, as it were, to an outside vantage point. A classic example is language. How do you fundamentally rethink language when all your thinking takes places (with)in the medium of language?

That is why rethinkers keep talking about “overthrowing the paradigm”, “stepping outside the AIDS zone” and what have you, only to repeatedly stumble and fall right back into it.

Henry Bauersaid

CathyVMsaid

Macdonald: eloquently put. We need a de Bono of the Rethinking world. Could we perhaps put our heads together and come up with some new language (like monoclonal logic LOL)to describe our concepts and thereby avoid stumbling into the AIDS zone.

Nick Naylorsaid

As always when rethinking rethinking, it is important not to automatically discredit via the reflex action valid points made by supporters of ARVs. The question becomes then, what, if any, valid points are they making.

The “Lazarus effect” may exist when “AIDS” full blown is a disseminated fungal infection. Perhaps this can be called a lucky accident. The non-toxic protease inhibitors may also work in combination with nutritional support, etc.

ANTI-NOTHING: The biochemistry of blocking “HIV infection” of cell cultures is presumably established by certain experiments. But how much and to what extent is there “fit” from such a model system that can be applied in vivo? If there is only “viral burden” (the proviral DNA integrated in chromatin) in a patient, thus no activity in vivo producing HIV messenger RNA, then there is nothing to be treated. This is acknowleged by physicians who declare (at least a temporary) success in their patients who do not register on “viral load” (RNA) tests. Thus the drugs can “work” on someone who was never sick in the first place. This is true even if the patient was “seropositive” due to the so-called cross-reaction potential. OR, even if the patient was “true positive” — here we’re conceding a point to establish something more fundamental — by the “official rules” of retrovirology those particles are destined to be “dead on arrival” once they are integrated in the chromosomes and transcriptionally silenced by mechanisms that were essentially unknown in 1984.

None of this is new in principle to those familiar with Dr Duesberg’s arguments and papers 1987-1990. He established quite clearly that no “there” was there in terms of putative “viremia”. One can differ on the point that “HIV antibodies” mean something or represent nothing more than virus neutralization (Duesberg). But even if they do represent an “autoimmune” problem, no physician in their right mind would recommend ARVs for that. This assumes the physician understands the clinical significance of auto-antibodies/(auto+excess)antigens that can be treated with “natural” or plant-based remedies and “nutriceuticals”.

Knowing that “clinical importance” is “unclear” in reality, one can observe how people are shuttled into the AIDS Zone. Fraud and cons are based on the perpetrators claiming whatever they want and getting away with it because the subject is technically complex. Physicians of course are great artists who can provide a pretense of clarity on the three above measurements in Cathy’s post.

And it gets worse as the latest on HIV’s “molecular biology” has shown up in my mailbox. I shudder and gasp thinking of reading 60 or so pages of the latest theories, the new improved versions of “HIV pathogenesis” that were cooked up at the recent and glorious international AIDS conference.

Joesaid

I know that isolated instances like those of my friend can contribute little (if any) real information about what is going on. However, I don’t think that antioxidant properties of any ARVs would have a manifest effect within 3 days (and anyway his ‘cocktail’ doesn’t include PIs). His symptoms (pre-pneumonia, and pre-HIV-test) had been gastric — for a couple of years he had not wanted to eat because of repeated feelings of nausea and what was called ‘acid reflux’ (I have my doubts about that diagnosis). Over those couple of years he steadily lost weight (not surprisingly) and developed generalized anaemia (pan-cytopenia, is I believe the term used).

What was truly extraordinary was that the only alternative opinion he’d been able to get following the ‘HIV test’, was from a doctor who performed a (costly) set of tests for nutritional deficiencies, but no significant deficiency was found (perhaps because over the years my friend had always taken great care about his diet and taken vitamin/mineral supplements, even though by this point he was looking like he’d come out of Belsen). Also, before finally giving up hope and starting on ARVs he had multiple colonoscopies (and whatever they call it when it’s oral), accompanied by biopsies. Again, nothing was found to be amiss.

Yet within three days of being on ARVs his appetite returned because the nausea and ‘reflux’ disappeared and he had a raging appetite. This is why the gastric dysbiosis that Henry published on this site resonated so strongly with me. I still believe my friend’s reaction to the ‘HIV test’ was brought on by his pneumonia, and that the pneumonia/immune deficiency was brought on by the anaemia, and that things have turned round for him because the ARVs somehow addressed his dysbiosis. One of the reasons he’d put off taking the ARVs was the fear that his already weak digestive system would be worsened by the toxicity of the ARVs (since that seemed to be a common side-effect of them).

Sorry to keep bringing the discussion back to a single case. But as both my friend and I have been HIV skeptics since 1988, and having witnessed his illness almost daily for some years, and witnessed what happened with the ARVs, I just want to make sure the details are known. I know it is just one case, and that probably many more don’t fit this because what we are witnessing is multi-factorial. I’m glad he wasn’t dogmatic about his skepticism, because he’s still alive and doing well. I would like him to try stopping them now but he is too fearful of the orthodoxy being right. I just hope that he will be brave enough to stop taking them if/when serious side-effects start to manifest themselves.

Henry Bauersaid

A single case can be very valuable in a situation about which essentially nothing is known for sure, because if everything about it is described, that can stimulate ideas about what to look for in other cases. It’s part of the data-gathering phase.

If every death of an HIV+ person is recorded as death from “HIV disease”, instead of full reporting of the immediate manifest cause, that prevents further study and understanding. A defender of the HIV/AIDS faith recently drew my attention to people who had avoided ARVs and were now dead. Looking further, I find that a couple of them had a decades-long history of drug abuse. To my mind, that’s enough reason why they died in middle age, some irreversible damage to their systems, nothing to do with “HIV” — except that drug abuse seems to produce a positive “HIV” test.

Anyway, your information is worth recording and may turn out to be very useful.

Noreen Martinsaid

Many of the above comments make sense to me. And yes, in terminal situations, the antiretrovirals may help for whatever reason. As an outspoken AIDS Rethinker, I have never hidden the fact that I was on them when sick and dying. Nevertheless, I do not believe that one should stay on them for the rest of one’s life. If the person is extremely sick, then use them as a crutch until one can rebuild one’s health. Unfortunately, the mainstream wants to keep the patient on them forever.

Many books and websites can help one rebuild health, if needed. I wouldn’t place much stock in the AIDS tests and CD4’s and viral loads because, as many of us can attest too, they make no sense whatsoever. Mine are 111 and 2 million, but big deal, I am fine.

CathyVMsaid

I am very gratified to hear you are okay after those not-so-lovely dire predictions from the AIDS apologists.
Whatever you are doing — keep it up, because you are a living testament to why their paradigm has more holes in it than my colander.

David Ocholasaid

I know someone who is not on ARVs but his viral load has dropped from 1292 to 324 and his CD4 has risen sharply from 584 to 690 in a matter of 45 days (between 3rd July 2008 and 18 August 2008).

Apparently this guy (a brother of mine) was diagnosed as HIV+ in Dec 2007 then his viral load was 214 and CD4 was 660. He has put on weight from 64 Kg in Dec 2007 to 76 Kg on Aug 15th 2008.

I actually share in this success as I researched and procured for him what has done this wonder. From July 2008 he started taking Flax Lignans with Selenium Plus (with Vitamin A, C, E and zinc) supplement.

We are still monitoring his progress and will let you guys know how it went.

I have really enjoyed reading everyone’s very thoughtful and well-said comments. And, as Dr Bauer stated, every single person’s own individual experience can provide much information and assistance in helping others.
For me personally, I am a 42-yr-old, white, married, mother (two teenagers) who has never been in a “risk group”. I was diagnosed in 1996 with full-blown AIDS after a positive HIV test, and a cell count of 29. This was AFTER my second child was born,two disasterous pregnancies/deliveries, and a month in the hospital with an infected C-section.
Based on a needle stick in the late 80’s, I have “supposedly” been infected for about 20 yrs now. (Didn’t get the test until 1996.)
I had never had any opportunistic infections, my husband tested negative after 7 yrs of unprotected sex, and both children were born negative. I took the HAART combo (AZT the whole time) for 11 yrs straight. As the years progressed, I started to look and feel much worse. It is my personal belief that death was getting closer for me on those drugs.
In April 2007, my husband “accidentally” stumbled across all the dissident/rethinker information. Valuable evidence that I feel was withheld from us for 11 yrs. Based on many days of reading, research, and doing my own due diligence, I quit all the meds at the end of April 2007.
I am so very happy to tell you all that today, I am feeling fantastic! No more side effects! All completely gone! I don’t know what kind of internal damage these drugs have done, but I’ve had multiple tests and scans over the last 1 1/2 yrs, and so far, everything looks good.
My VERY LAST T-cell and V.L. count was shortly after I quit the meds. They were 96 and 135,000 respectively. My HIV doc was very angry, told me I’d done a stupid thing, and that I’d be DEAD, VERY SOON!
Needless to say, I dropped him like a hot potato.
As a final point, I live an extremely healthy lifestyle, I have become a master of nutritional health and all things alternative. (I came from a world of orthodox medicine, emergency medicine, and surgery. Of course, doctor’s were God.)
Thoughts and comments are welcome.
Health to all!
Karri

Henry Bauersaid

Marcelsaid

Congratulations. You are one of the lucky ones who found this information. One of the major crimes against humanity that AIDS Inc., the public-health profession and the media are guilty of, is not telling people that many “facts” they report are really unproven theories and speculations, and not making opposing viewpoints from highly qualified scientists available to the public. This is even more of a tragedy in Third-World countries where people cannot even have the good fortune to “stumble” upon this information, because it doesn’t exist in their language. They are bombarded with terrifying nonsense by their governments, who are spoonfed mainstream pap by the corrupt WHO and corrupt NGOs, and have absolutely no access to the means of intellectual self-defense on these life-and-death matters. Pretty much the only messages they hear are “Don’t die! Always wear a condom” and “Get tested!”

I would caution anyone who wants to come off the meds to do so slowly. Though I’m not a medical professional, I think you have to give your body time to get used to no meds. Your body has made many adjustments in order to survive with the meds, and withdrawing them abruptly could cause serious problems. Reducing them to zero gradually over 30 days, however, gives the body the opportunity to safely return to normal functioning.

Keketsi Thoahlanesaid

I am a 27 years old male from Lesotho,who has been diagnosed with HIV in 2009.and I haven’t taken any medication,I have been living well by maintaining my diet. I wish I could talk to some of my brothers and sisters who are infected and those affected.